The Exploratory Advanced Research Program

FOREWORD

This report has been prepared with the support of the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA’s) Exploratory Advanced Research Program under the technical supervision of the FHWA Turner–Fairbank Highway Research Program’s Office of Operations Research and Development. This work was initiated to provide the U.S. transportation research community with a better understanding of the current state of research and development and to encourage broader thinking about cooperative vehicle–highway automation systems based on developments in other countries. This topic has received increased attention in the industrialized world, even while interest in the United States has been at a relatively low level in recent years. It is now time that the United States take a fresh look at the technical and institutional issues associated with vehicle automation and its implications for the future of the surface transportation system, particularly when interest in the topic has been growing within the automotive and information technology industries.

Joseph I. Peters
Director,
Office of Operations Research and Development

This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Transportation in the interest of information exchange. The U.S. Government assumes no liability for the use of the information contained in this document. The U.S. Government does not endorse products or manufacturers. Trademarks or manufacturers’ names appear in this report only because they are considered essential to the objective of the document.

Quality Assurance Statement

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This report summarizes the current state of the art in cooperative vehicle–highway automation systems in Europe and Asia based on a series of meetings, demonstrations, and site visits, combined with the results of literature review. This review covers systems that provide drivers with a range of automation capabilities, from driver assistance to fully automated driving, with an emphasis on cooperative systems that involve active exchanges of information between the vehicles and the roadside and among separate vehicles. The trends in development and deployment of these systems are examined by country, and the similarities and differences relative to the U.S. situation are noted, leading toward recommendations for future U.S. action.

The Literature Review on Recent International Activity in Cooperative Vehicle-Highway Automation Systems is published separately as FHWA-HRT-13-025.